Saturday, November 10, 2012 hours 13:15
Light and colour for Cultural Heritage: Research Enhancement Restoration
 Cared by Enzo Cacioli with the specialised help of the Prof. Luca Africh - LUCE5 ILLUMINOTECNICA
Saturday November 10 from 1:15 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. - Sala Tintori
Light and colour have a discreet and synergistic action on cultural heritage, which is essential for their full value to the eye of the educated observers as of the rushed tourists. Both factors interact in fact affecting both the perception of forms and proportions, and in particular emphasize or veil particular parts and decorative elements. Properly mixed, they have the advantage of enhancing the cultural artefact as such intervention if made with particular efficacy without altering the volume ratios, putting on a good "soft power" gives to the architectures and to the other expressions of the human mind the natural corollary originally desired by the author.
Working on light and colour in the delicate restoration process usually requires a careful methodological research of the original colour values, and the proper consideration of the needs required by the exhibition of the moveable artworks, their location and their more congenial lighting. The action of restorer of painted and decorated surfaces will use the technological deepening of the materials and the most advanced research on the development of methods of analysis, finding and cleaning of colour values, the tools and techniques of lighting for an optimal utilization of the desiderated assets. But every intervention should proceed through a preliminary careful observation of the single artwork and of its environmental context and by a deep knowledge and interpretation of the interesting development in the use of colour and lighting effects through the different styles of architecture and painting.
As the Romanic and Gothic had preferred the solidity and the austerity of stone architecture capable of creating soft atmospheres penetrated by shafts of light through thin lancet windows and harmonic rosettes, so the Florentine Renaissance read the architecture with the use of whitewash, offering large areas plastered and painted with elegant stone molding and hosting new light in buildings; later the Baroque, introducing colour in the decoration of wall mirrors, will enhance the clear stucco moldings, the elegant faux marble decorations and the gilt frames in a bright really innovative colour contrast.
In the recent decades, the culture of painting restoration is progressively introducing a demanding of training of skills and experience insight of the sites, with particular reference to the appreciation of colour and of the colours and the rediscovery of the natural light and of the lighting applications as determining factors for reading architecture and painting with new eyes: light and colour take on a central role for the enhancement of cultural heritage, in a fascinating discovery that makes us more aware every day.
Speaker: Enzo Calcioli
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